Winter Dreams

by Simmons, Trana Mae

  The moment he realized Sandy was approaching him and not one of the other dogs, Blancheur came to attention. Sandy had noticed the difference between the Malamutes' and Huskies' tails right from the first time he'd seen the Husky breed. Malamutes carried their tails over their backs as a matter of course. The Huskies' tails trailed downward when they were at rest, but curled over their backs when running or alert to something. Blancheur's tail swept up and curled tightly over his rear haunches, as it had when he growled a confrontation at Sandy's arrival.

  Sandy walked steadily onward, concentrating on recalling the physical differences in the two breeds instead of the bruised pride he suffered on his previous encounter with the Husky. Their dispositions were as far apart as their physical attributes. Every Malamute had similar eyes — almond shaped and dark brown. Huskies' eyes varied, and he'd seen them with both brown eyes and both blue eyes. He'd also seen some with one brown and one blue eye, like the two that bored into his own constant gaze right now.

  In Alaska he'd heard Husky owners discuss what good team dogs the breed was and how docile these animals were. He knew for a fact Malamutes needed careful handling to prevent them from becoming too aggressive. Descended from the Boreal Wolf, Malamutes carried a wild strain in their breeding.

  After he checked out the background of the Huskies, he'd assumed their more gentle nature came from having been domesticated for so many years in Siberia, the pureness of the breed maintained because they'd been cut off from the rest of the world. Only in recent years had the breed even been discovered. From what he understood, they were working dogs for the Siberian Inuit families, used to pull sleds and herd reindeer. But they were also very much a part of the family life, due to their importance in the Inuit lifestyle.

  Anyone could tell, however, that Huskies, too, descended from wolves. Now and then, despite selective breeding, a dog like Blancheur would crop up — one with more belligerent traits.

  One of them would break and bow to the domination of the other — either him or the dog. Just like in wolf packs, there could only be one alpha male. Sandy was determined to be the alpha in this situation. For his dominion over the animals to be complete, and their obedience unquestioning, there could be no other way. Lives depended upon their teamwork and the dogs' submission on the trail.

  Blancheur growled and curled his upper lip, exposing sharp white fangs, but Sandy kept on walking. The Husky crouched as though to spring. Sandy never hesitated — and Blancheur didn't leap. Sandy stopped right in front of Blancheur and the Husky broke contact with his gaze. However, Blancheur didn't roll over and expose his stomach, as a lesser male would have done to complete his submission to Sandy's authority. Instead the Husky laid his head on his paws and stared past Sandy. The growl died in his throat.

  Kneeling, Sandy reached out a hand. He didn't make his motions slow or cautious — he didn't hurry them. He scratched behind one of Blancheur's ears, then ran his hand down the dog's back.

  "Up," he ordered, and Blancheur glanced at him, then rose. Sandy examined the dog's musculature, then picked up each foot and checked for any cuts or sores. The pads were thick and callused, with a hint of webbing between the toes. Each one was perfectly healthy, but he would have leather protective gear made for him and every other dog on both his and Laura's teams anyway.

  Satisfied with the animal's health, Sandy stood and turned his back on Blancheur. Tension filled the air, and he could almost read the Husky's mind. Nothing happened, and Sandy slowly turned back around. Blancheur met his gaze for an instant, then looked away.

  He guessed that would have to do for now. Forcing any further confrontation would jeopardize the progress they had made thus far. After laying a hand on Blancheur's head one more time, he headed back toward Laura.

  When he got to her, he said truthfully, "He's a fine dog. I like his spirit, though he and I will have some things to work out yet. However, he'll be a good, dependable dog on the trail."

  "You can tell that just from those few minutes with him?"

  "For as long as you've been around dogs, you should be able to tell that, too."

  She bristled, and he held up a hand to forestall her defensiveness. "Your not having that ability is understandable, but it's something you need to admit and work on. So far, you've only traveled your safe, less risky trails around here. You've had dozens of people available to come out after you if you're overdue from a run, and there's a damned good chance they'd get to you in time to keep you from any real harm."

  "I . . . ."

  Sandy talked right over her attempt to interrupt. "If you're out there alone overnight — or against competition for a week or more — with only your team to depend upon, you need to know every one of your dogs inside and out. You need to know lots more than whether or not they'll lick your hand or try to bite you — whether they prefer fish or moose meat to eat."

  He lowered his voice and watched her face carefully. "And you need to know which one of your dogs you could bring yourself to eat first, if you were lost somewhere and starving to death."

  She gasped and grew rigid. Slowly she turned her head and gazed out over her dogs, her eyes pausing fleetingly on each one. Finally she said, "That's not something I have to decide right now, is it?"

  "No," he agreed. "But it's something you have to keep in the back of your mind. It's happened more than once in Alaska — and probably around here, if anyone would ever tell you about it. It's not usually a story they'd pass on to a woman, though."

  Her eyes flashed. "You keep harping on my gender!"

  "Because it's important," he said through gritted teeth. "That's one fact you better get locked tight into that pretty head of yours. You, yourself, have to make allowances for your being a woman. If you don't, you're making it that much more dangerous for yourself — and for anyone saddled with the responsibility of looking out for your safety!"

  She nodded slowly, the spark in her eyes dying, a musing contemplation replacing it. "I guess I understand. If I swallow my pride and admit my gender is a hindrance, I'll be much further ahead. I'll have contingencies planned to compensate for my lack of physical power — my lesser callous traits."

  A measure of respect for her took root in Sandy's mind right then. He'd expected a prissy just-as-good-as-any-man attitude, since she was determined to take part in a man's race. Instead, when pointed out to her, she faced the reality of the drawbacks her gender presented.

  Still he didn't expect her to ever be able to make a race driver. Sure, she had determination a lot of men lacked, but it took more than determination to accomplish seemingly impossible feats.

  For some reason a picture of a horseless carriage he'd seen flashed in his mind. That, too, must have seemed an impossibility at one time, but now they were becoming commonplace. One thing was certain, though. They'd never find any sort of transportation other than a dog and sled across the snow. Hell, those drifts in the winter were sometimes roof high. And there would always be things that women just couldn't do as well as men.

  Laura snapped her fingers in front of his face.

  "What?" Sandy asked.

  "You were off somewhere," she said with a laugh. "I thought your sister Cristy would be the daydreamer, given that you said she was an artist. But I called your name three times before I snapped my fingers."

  "Sorry. What were you talking about?"

  "I was wondering if there were some other things you wanted to discuss with me — things that my being a woman might cause problems about. Since we're on this subject anyway."

  Sandy studied her, then took a breath and forged on. "How does your fiancé feel about you spending nights with another man?"

  "David?" Her voice rose in a squeak. "Why, I . . . I'd n . . . never think of doing such a thing," she sputtered. "What on earth does that have to do with anything?"

  He chuckled at her outrage. "Sometime before you leave for Alaska, you and I will be spending several nights together out on the trail." Her eyes widened. "I need to
know what your strengths are out there — and your weaknesses."

  "We can take Pete with us," she said in a decisive voice. "Or David."

  "No. We can't. Neither Pete nor David will be with us if we make it as far as the race you're training for, so they have no place in that part of our training. Besides, I doubt it would do your reputation any less harm for you to spend all night — several nights — on the trail with two men rather than one."

  She remained quiet for a moment, and he heard her deep-gulp swallow.

  "I'll explain things to David," she said finally. Then she slipped him a mischievous glance. "You can tell my father!"

  He shook his head and chuckled along with her. "Deal," he agreed. "Now I better get headed back to town."

  Moving away, he halted and turned back toward her when she called his name.

  "I have a suggestion of my own," she said with a teasing smile. "I think you should confine your comments to me about what I can do to improve the weaknesses you feel you need to work on as my trainer."

  "I thought that's what I was doing," he replied, perplexed at her words.

  "Well, I don't see what my head being pretty has to do with how well my mind can retain your instructions and learn from them. That doesn't come into it at all, in my opinion."

  He gave a resigned sigh. "You're wrong. If you were old-maid ugly, your being a woman would still be a problem in the race. Your being pretty complicates things even more."

  This time he left her without being called back. Seeing him approach, his dogs rose and stretched, eager to hit the trail again.

  "We'll start getting a lot longer runs tomorrow," he promised them.

  Releasing his snow anchor, he climbed onto the runners and called "kra," then "gee" to turn them back the way they'd come. Thoughts of Laura followed him down the trail, and he could have kicked himself for discussing the nights they'd have to spend together with her. The nights were necessary, of course, but he could have waited a while to bring that up. Now he had weeks to fight the worry of how he would handle those looming nights alone with her.

  ***

  Chapter 5

  By several weeks later, Laura and Sandy had worked out a training routine. Sandy's method of teaching her involved her doing every bit of work from feeding and caring for her own team to harnessing and unharnessing them each day and maintaining the dogs' harness in tiptop shape. He was able to instruct her verbally, with absolutely no "hands-on" interaction between them. She respected his wishes, and not only because she recalled his initial threat the day they met of terminating his employment with anyone who defied his orders. In addition, she couldn't quite completely erase the scene in the kennel from her mind, when she'd so foolishly played a different sort of "hands-on" game with him. That closeness to him had shown her that an engagement ring on her finger didn't protect her from being attracted to another man. Lucky for her she'd learned her lesson with a man who had some honor about him and who didn't take advantage of her immaturity.

  She didn't let the thought that tried to creep into her mind sometimes in the middle of a restless night take hold. It was stupid of her to feel resentful of Sandy's obvious lack of attraction to her in return.

  The weather into November had held perfectly for her training. Temperatures dipped below freezing, typical for this time of year, but the blizzards that sometimes came down from Canada along with the displays of Northern Lights didn't materialize. Instead, light snows laid several inches at a time over the land, and one day Laura had jokingly told Sandy it was perfect, doggie heaven weather for sled dogs.

  Today, Laura laughed gaily and "whoa'ed" her team on the edge of a wilderness lake. The lakes were freezing over quickly, but she and Sandy hadn't checked the thickness of the ice on this one yet to see whether it was safe for the teams to cross. Barely half a minute later, Sandy pulled up beside her, his sled swerving to a halt and spraying a shower of snow over her.

  "Hey!" she cried. "Don't be a sore loser!"

  Shaking his head, Sandy tossed the snow anchor out and stepped from the runners. "You don't have to keep proving your team is faster than mine. Besides, I could have beaten you if I'd taken the shortcut across the marsh. You made way too wide a turn when you changed direction at that huge pine, too. You're going to have to work with your dogs on that. There's times in a race where every foot of distance you cut off counts, especially if you manage to get close to the finish line and one or two other teams are racing you to it."

  "I didn't realize the marsh was on our route," Laura replied with a frown.

  "Laura, you haven't been listening to me again. The Alaskan races aren't over well-marked, seasoned trails. They give you the starting point, the checkpoints you have to pass through, and the ending spot. You figure out how to follow the vague route and get to the end in the least amount of time. Whoever does it the fastest, wins."

  "In other words, cheating is fine."

  "It's not considered cheating! That's your femininity talking again. A man understands the main rule is that there are no rules."

  She must have still looked confused because Sandy said, "Look, it's like a poker game. It's not cheating for a man to act like he's got a royal flush in his hand, when he actually doesn't even have so much as a single pair — or even an ace high. He might end up bluffing out someone who holds four aces, and that's fine with the rest of the players. The player with the most skill won, and they accept that."

  "They don't usually let women play poker," Laura reminded him, then broke into giggles at the consternation on his face when he thought she didn't understand his analogy. With a wink, she said, "But Buck taught me how. I had to promise him that I wouldn't tattle to Father, though. And come to think of it, Buck owes me fifty cents yet."

  He smiled, then gazed over the frozen lake. "There's something else you need to learn," he said, tilting his head in an indicative gesture. "See out there where the wind's swept that ice clear of snow?"

  "You mean where it's sort of a different color?"

  "Yes. That's probably soft ice. You don't want to get close enough to investigate, though. By the time you found out whether or not it really was soft, your lead dog could already be floundering in the water."

  He glanced at her and then at Blancheur, who was sitting on his haunches, fidgeting to get going again. "How's that new pup doing?"

  "He's got quite a ways to go," she said. "I'll turn him over to Pete to train after this run, like you said earlier. I just wanted to get a feel for him first."

  "As you should," Sandy responded. "Your dogs are your partners out here. Another thing is, never, never force your dogs down a path they're reluctant to take — or to cross an area of a lake that seems safe to you but they shy away from. Dogs can sense unsafe conditions, while we have to depend on our eyes to show them to us."

  "Yes, sir," Laura said.

  He gazed at her steadily for a full half minute, his teal eyes unreadable but not as stern as they were at other times. His red knit hat balanced precariously on his blond hair, which was badly in need of cutting. She'd heard Katie ask him just last night if she could do the honors of shortening his hair, but he evaded giving her a firm answer. He had, however, agreed to try to work out some suitable appointment time.

  They'd traveled a good ten miles this morning, and both of them had opened their coats to cool down from their exertions. She, as well as Sandy, ran beside the sleds as often as riding on them. Sandy was adamant about that, saying she had to develop her leg muscles for the race.

  His jacket was made from dark gray wolf skin, and she'd noticed the first time she saw him in it how the color complemented his eyes. The few times he forced her to follow behind his sled rather than let her race ahead of him, she'd seen that his legs didn't appear to be in need of any further development at all!

  Now he grinned at her, exposing even white teeth. Despite trying strenuously, she hadn't gotten him beyond smiles and infrequent chuckles yet, but she didn't have any idea what was amusing him
at the moment. He willingly told her.

  "Repeat everything you've learned today," he said. "I don't want you forgetting, like you did with the information about not having to follow an exact path with your team."

  Laura agreeably repeated the facts he had told her, her upper body moving back and forth in time to the sing-song cadence of her voice. "You don't have to follow the easiest route, if you can get there faster another way. Watch out for different colored ice. It can be dangerous. Listen to your dogs. They're smarter than you are."

  He did it! He actually threw back his head and laughed! A fission of pleasure shot through her, and a huge grin split her face. His laugh was deep and throaty, and he'd closed his eyes. Weathered and tanned from spending so much time outdoors, tiny wrinkles fanned out from the corners.

  And heavens. He had the cutest dimple in his left cheek. There might be one in the other cheek, too, if she could see, but his head was turned in profile. She stepped off the sled and sidled around to the far side of him.

  He opened his eyes, chuckles still rumbling in his wide chest. "What are you doing?"

  "Seeing if you have another dimple on this side of your face," she replied honestly.

  "I guess I do," he said with a slight shrug. "At least, Colleen always said I did have. I've never watched myself in the mirror while I laughed, though."

  "Yep, your wife was right." Briefly, his admonition for them to keep a distance between them because of his being male and her female crossed Laura's mind. But surely they'd spent enough time together now to prove they could be strictly friends.

  Wanting to hear his laugh again, she curled her fingers inside her mittens, stuck her thumb out and punched it into his cheek. "It's right there. At least, I think that's where I saw it. Laugh again and let me see if that's the place."